Brown Releases Report Detailing Impacts of NIST's Partnerships with U.S. Industry

U.S. Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown today released "Delivering Results: A Progress Report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology," a document that describes how the Commerce agency is successfully teaming with U.S. companies in a joint effort to promote economic growth and industrial competitiveness.

"This report clearly demonstrates that public-private partnerships, a cornerstone of the Clinton technology agenda, are working," Brown said. "The genius and entrepreneurial drive of America's private companies blended with NIST's industry-driven technology programs are producing advantages for companies and entire industrial sectors that are key to our economic growth and competitiveness."

The 69-page report updates how NIST is carrying out its mission to promote U.S. economic growth by working with industry to develop technology, measurements and standards. Impacts and results from each of the four major NIST programs—the Advanced Technology Program, the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, the Baldrige National Quality Program, and Laboratory Research and Services—are highlighted. Representative examples of realized and anticipated returns on activities in these programs are related. The examples are illustrative, intended to allow readers to assess the programs' roles, objectives and progress.

Some sample results excerpted from the report:

• ATP projects are fostering important technology developments, including new processes leading to higher- quality, lower-cost optoelectronic devices; a 50-percent reduction in the size of non-volatile memory chips; and a prototype technology with the potential to protect the nation's supply of blood and blood products from viruses.
• Benefits anticipated by the 610 firms responding to surveys by the MEP centers totaled $167 million, the cumulative result of sales increases and cost savings attributed to actions undertaken with technical assistance from the centers. This translates into a conservatively estimated benefit of $8 on every $1 of federal investment.
• In eight economic studies of the impact of the NIST laboratory services and research projects, the median aggregate—or "spillover" (flow back to the U.S. economy)—rate of return ranges from 63 percent to 428 percent.
• About 1 million copies of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria have been distributed since 1988, with thousands of organizations using the criteria as a quality improvement "road map."

Also included in the report are four appendices listing participants in ATP projects, MEP centers, cooperative research and development agreement partners with NIST laboratories, and winners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

For a free printed copy of "Delivering Results: A Progress Report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology," send a self-addressed mailing label to the NIST Public Affairs Division, A903 Administration Building, NIST, Gaithersburg, Md. 20899-0001, or fax requests to (301) 926-1630.

Full text of the report will soon be available electronically through the Internet Gopher system. From a remote log in, type "telnet gopher.nist.gov". At the log-in prompt, type "gopher". From a gopher client, use the gopher server at "gopherserver.nist.gov" with port 70. On the World Wide Web, the URL is "http://www.nist.gov/item/NIST_General.html".